Robert Hooke

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2016

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Robert Hooke (1635-1703) who worked for Robert Boyle and was curator of experiments at the Royal Society. The engraving of a flea, above, is taken from his Micrographia which caused a sensation when published in 1665. Sometimes remembered for his disputes with Newton, he studied the planets with telescopes and snowflakes with microscopes. He was an early proposer of a theory of evolution, discovered light diffraction with a wave theory to explain it and felt he was rarely given due credit for his discoveries. With David Wootton Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York Patricia Fara President Elect of the British Society for the History of Science And Rob Iliffe Professor of History of Science at Oxford University Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time for more details about In Our Time
0:04.0	and for our terms of use please go to bbc.co.uk slash radio for.
0:08.9	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:10.7	Hello, for two decades in the 17th century Robert Hook was arguably the greatest natural
0:15.4	philosopher in Britain at the head of the new interesting science inspired by Copernicus
0:20.1	and Descartes.
0:21.1	He excelled everywhere, he studied the planets with his telescopes, the snowflakes with
0:25.7	his microscopes.
0:26.9	At the height of the great plague of 1665 his book Micrographia captured the public
0:31.5	imagination with its detailed engravings of fleas and the eyes of flies never before seen.
0:37.6	The finest maker of scientific instruments in Europe, he built the air pump for Robert
0:41.5	Boyle, he devised a wave theory of light and on it went.
0:45.2	Isaac Newton apparently acknowledged his debt to Hook with a phrase, if I've seen
0:49.2	further, it's my standing on the shoulders of giants.
0:52.0	That though was written during a long bitter dispute.
0:55.5	At the end of which Hook was largely written out of scientific history for about 300 years.
1:00.8	Wouldn't me to discuss Robert Hook are David Wooten, professor of history at the University
1:04.5	of York, Patricia Farrer, president elect of the British Society for the History of Science
1:09.2	and Robert Eiliff, professor of the History of Science at Oxford University, David Wooten.
1:15.0	In the early 17th century natural philosophers were, sound destroyer of the old Aristotelian
1:20.0	ideas.
1:21.0	What was emerging?
	...

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